Rising from the ashes of the beloved (if erratic) print digest (that itself rose from the ashes of The Scream Factory magazine), we'd like to welcome you to the bare•bones e-zine. We look forward to offering the same irreverent reviews and commentary you've come to expect from us.

Monday, September 8, 2014

Do You Dare Enter? Part Thirty-Five: April 1973

The DC Mystery Anthologies 1968-1976

by Peter Enfantino andJack Seabrook

Nick Cardy

Unexpected 146

"The Monstrosity!"
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Sonny Trinidad

"Die Laughing!"
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Jerry Grandenetti

"A Nightmare Must End!"
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Francisco Redondo

"Marry Me in My Grave"
Story by George Kashdan
Art by Ernie Chan

Jack: Sylvester Quimby is a deformed hunchback with a brilliant brain who is the star student in medicine at the university. He dreams of being noticed by lovely Loretta Carter but she ignores "The Monstrosity!" so he creates a substitute for himself in Arthur Baldwin, a bright, handsome and athletic robot who soon becomes the toast of campus. When Arthur is a little too successful and gets engaged to marry Loretta, Sylvester does away with him. Guilt gets the better of the hunchback and he confesses to the police, who call the campus authorities and learn that no one has ever heard of Arthur Baldwin or Loretta Carter and that they are just figments of Quimby's tortured mind. He goes into therapy and we see that he is actually handsome and not deformed. This is Sonny Trinidad's second story for DC and his first horror effort, and he does nice work. Too bad the story is a bit far-fetched.

Peter: Having Carl Wessler unveil the cliched reveal at story's end at least helped me to understand all the inconsistencies in this clunker. Why would a hunchback create a really cute guy to woo his secret love and then get his panties in a bunch when the plan works? How did Quimby transfer "part" of his brain into the android and not lose some of his own motor skills? And most glaring of all, did the boxing commission and NCAA have even worse standards back in 1973 than now? No blood tests? Alas, that dopey climax forces me not to ask all these important questions.

Jack: Al Dirk is a born loser, so when he lets himself get talked into robbing diamonds from a museum safe with Joe Willis, it's not surprising that Joe escapes and leaves Al behind to get caught. Al evades capture, tracks Joe down and shoots him, but he forgets to grab the diamonds. Joe manages to hang on and, when he is released from the hospital, Al shoots him again and finishes him off. But Joe is able to "Die Laughing!" because, the cops tell Al when they catch him at the scene of the murder, Joe had only a week to live from Al's prior attack. In the panel I've reproduced here, I thought Al was holding a beehive, but I finally figured out it was a pillow used to silence the gunshot.

Peter: So... that's quite a doctor who worked on Joe Willis and then let him leave the hospital after a couple days. The whole story is pretty confusing (I couldn't keep Al's flashbacks straight). Lately, we've been seeing some decent Jerry Grandenetti work over in the 1962 DC war books. "Die Laughing" perfectly illustrates just how horribly wrong things can go for an artist in only 11 years. This is vintage Bad Jerry to go with the usual pulpy Wessler script.

Jack: A jet pilot has a recurring dream that he performs a midair rescue of a young man who is trying to fly with home-made wings. His doctor shakes him and tells him that "A Nightmare Must End!" so he awakens and we discover that it's the 15th century and the dreaming young man is Leonardo Da Vinci, certain that someday man will fly. Redondo's art is impressive and I was surprised by the unexpected ending of this three-page tale.

Peter: A pointless short-short but at least it's graced with nice Redondo art.

Jack: Years ago, Oliver jilted Lady Letitia on the night of her wedding, so she has sat in her high window ever since, growing old waiting for her man to return and "Marry Me in My Grave." Return he does, looking as young as the day he left. Letitia is delighted and she is not even upset when her servant Dorkas yanks Oliver's wig and beard off of his head and reveals him to be an old man. What Letitia doesn't know is that this old man is not even Oliver, just a scheming wretch who wants her money. When the new Oliver learns that the real Oliver absconded with Letitia's fortune, he decides to grab her silver and go, but Letitia and Dorkas catch him in the act and lock him away forever. They head away from the old house, leaving the old man to sit in the place where Letitia sat for so many years, wasting away until he is nothing but a skeleton. This takes enough twists and turns to stay entertaining and Chan's art fits the story perfectly. A question for any readers with expertise in Gothic history: was Dickens's Great Expectations the first example of the woman jilted on her wedding day who sits waiting for years?

Peter: I thought the story was meandering but I enjoyed its surprise ending (at least I was surprised) and Ernie Chan's atmospheric visuals. I'd bet my near-mint copy of Ghosts #107 that Ernie was at least a bit influenced by the "Poetic Justice" segment of the Tales from the Crypt film as Oliver's rotting corpse is a dead-ringer for Peter Cushing's Grimsdyke.

Bernie Wrightson

The House of Mystery 213

"Back from the Realm of the Damned"
Story by John Albano
Art by Alex Nino

"The Other Side!"
Story by Steve Skeates
Art by Romy Gamboa

"In His Own Image!"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Adolfo Buylla

Peter: A young man entombs his stepfather behind a brick wall when he believes the man was responsible for the death of his mother. Now free to search the mansion for the old miser's hidden wealth, our protagonist tears the house apart until he finally finds the stash stuffed up the chimney. Suddenly, he is surprised to see his stepfather, now no more than a withered carcass, "Back from the Realm of the Damned" and swearing his stepson won't live to spend his ill-gotten booty. Grabbing the loot, the frightened man hoofs it to another deserted mansion where he quickly falls asleep from exhaustion. Ironically, the owner of the house has left orders that this house should be bricked up and left as a shrine to his dead wife. John Albano puts together a nice skeleton of a story but forgets to write a bit of flesh to go with it. The climax is confusing and, when you think about it, pretty stupid (wouldn't the company in charge of shutting the house down search for squatters first?). It's noted that the stepfather becomes the first spirit to escape hell and is then pulled back "by the demons of hell." Forget the evil stepson, this is the aspect of the story Albano should have focused on. Though Alex Nino's art is sharp, it's not the best I've seen but then there are no cosmic menaces for him to conjure here, simply ghosts.

Jack: Come on, Peter, this is great stuff! Okay, I guess the construction workers should have checked the house and the guy probably would have woken up, but this is about as close to EC as we've gotten so far. Nino's carcass (or ghost?) is excellent and the skeleton remains of the bad guy at the end are also nice. I really liked this story.

Peter: Debra and Matt, on their second honeymoon, get lost in Hicksville and ask a farmer for directions. Sure as a pig rolls in slop, he don't know nothing. He does recommend a local motel to the couple but warns them not to stay in room 4-A as no tenant of that particular abode has ever been seen again. Once they get to the motel, sure enough, they're given 4-A and Matt is too tired and too skeptical to argue. Debra, however, doesn't like it and makes excuses not to hit the sack (being this is 1973, the usual excuses are not bandied about) but sleep finally does come. When they awaken, they discover they are in a very hot, arid place and they can see their room through a giant glass screen. Surprise! They're on "The Other Side" of Cain's TV set! Oh, Steve, how could you trot this one out again? I assume that fabulous old Twilight Zone episode ("What's in the Box?") was on that week? "Average" is about the nicest word I can label Romy Gamboa's art. His characters are posed in unrealistic fashion and there's just no life to the proceedings. Check out the panel I've reproduced here and try to hold your right hand up in front of your face as Debra does. Then come back to the blog after your surgery.

Gil Kane-ish

Jack: If someone tells you "don't stay in 4-A" and you get there and there are plenty of rooms, why would you stay in 4-A? My wife would never stand for it. As for Gamboa's art, he's John Calnan on one page and Gil Kane on another. Very uneven.

Peter: Mason is obsessed with the dark arts and he'll do anything to further his quest. That includes murder and embezzlement so, when his boss smells cooked books, Mason has to fashion himself a doppelganger "In His Own Image!" The twin doesn't take to orders involving murder and double-crosses Mason. Unfortunately, what happens to one happens to the other. A really weak and confusing story (we're never told exactly what Mason's goal is with all these black magic books), softened even further by the insertion of Cain within the action yet again. Here, the horror host actually narrates the story on-panel, which can be very distracting (Cain's expository at the climax, to clue in those of us who are too dense to get it, felt more than a bit tacked on). Adolfo Buylla's art is also very distracting, but in a positive way. All in all, one of the weakest HoMs in quite a while but we did get that killer Wrightson cover.

Jack: Buylla's art has a good retro feel to it, like a '50s or '60s reprint we would have seen in the bigger issues. Not so good is Oleck's story, which relies overly much on Cain to explain what's going on.

Bernie Wrightson

The House of Secrets 107

"Skin Deep"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Alfredo Alcala

"The Night of the Nebish!"
Story by Arnold Drake
Art by Alfredo Alcala

"Winner Take All!"
Story by Steve Skeates
Art by Bernard Baily

Peter: Louis Bardon is an ugly man--in body and soul--who happens to love the beautiful Madelon. But Madelon is engaged to handsome Antoine Dupree and that makes Louis see red. Knowing Madelon will never love him until he's handsome, Louis visits the local witch and has her fashion a disguise for him. Once he's convinced the mask is the real deal he murders first the witch and then (sans mask) Antoine and comes to Madelon's rescue, disguised as the handsome Francois Benet. Madelon swallows Francois' hook and the two are soon married but the fickle girl still holds a fondness in her heart for her dead fiance. This infuriates Louis/Francois so much that he unmasks in front of his bride but her reaction isn't the one he expected. As the woman laughs in his face, she takes off her Madelon disguise and shows that beauty is indeed skin deep. Okay, forget for a moment the fact that neither Madelon nor Louis' ugly faces have the same shape as their pretty ones and Louis' voice should have given away the game, this one's a hoot. Yeah, I know, you say "Well, Peter, you're biased, since Alcala is your favorite artist!" Yep, you're right, but the whole package is so wildly goofy it's tough not to like it. I was legitimately surprised by the twist ending but I think Jack Oleck neglected to add in a line about Madelon visiting the old witch and getting herself prettied up so we're left to assume that was the way things went down.

Jack: They got me! I did not see that one coming. I thought Alcala's art was average for him through most of the story but that ending was a whopper! He sure can draw ugly. This is twice this month (and I'm only on my third comic) that I got an EC feeling. Does this mean these comics are starting to get better?

Peter: Constantly trod on by his boss, his wife, his son, and even the family dog, Morty Kranz is truly a nebish, a total doormat, but that all changes when he experiences malarial symptoms (hallucinations of monsters haunt his nights) and visits his doctor. The MD tells Morty that being a punching bag can add to his sickness and drag him down even farther, so a personal revamping is in order. Morty leaves the doctor a new man, promising himself he won't be taken for granted ever again. Meanwhile, aliens Gur and Rax have arrived from outer space to conquer earth for its precious elements. The two forces, Marty and aliens, collide at just the right time and the meek little man, thinking the two monsters mere hallucinations, inadvertently quashes the plan for world domination. Arriving at home, Marty Kranz is quickly reminded that his wife is not a hallucination. Yep, it's simple but it's also a fabulously funny little romp, one that surely would have graced the pages of Plop! rather than HoS if that humor zine had been launched a year earlier. It's a rare treat to have back-to-back illustrated tales by Alcala but there's something a bit different here. It may just be the exaggerated figures of Morty and his obese wife, but it almost looks as though an unnamed inker has come in and slightly changed the look of Alfredo's pencils. Oh, you can still see the master shining through but it's an Alcala closer to Aragones than Wrightson. "The Night of the Nebish" is a delight from start to finish.

Jack: I loved the doctor sitting on the end of Morty's bed and uttering the following line of dialogue: "We Jews have a name for guys like you--Nebish!" Priceless. Alcala's less formal art style really works well here and I'm impressed that he could do something so different than what he did in the previous story.

Peter: During a storm of biblical proportions, two men, one an old hobo and the other a young, well-educated laze, seek shelter in the only house above the waterline. As the water rises, the men must travel up the stairs until they reach the top floor. There they discover a corpse in bed and a suitcase stashed with money. To escape the odor of death and the pack of rats who have congregated and made a meal of the unfortunate homeowner, the pair travel down to the lower level to count their dough. Unwilling to share the stash, Mr. Higher Education throttles the derelict and prepares to wait out the storm. The weakened floorboards give out above him and the bed comes crashing down, pinning him to the stairs and affording fresh meat to the army of hungry rodents. Despite another overused plot line, Steve Skeates comes through with a readable script and Bernard Bailey delights with pleasantly sleazy panels. It's hilarious that a loser like Mr. Higher Education could look down on the hobo ("He doesn't deserve that money anyway! Not any of it! He's nothing but a bum! He'd just waste the money! But I'm educated! I know what to do with the money!") and refreshing that the other party in this affair (the hobo) has nothing but good intentions, splitting the cash, right from the beginning. By the 1970s, work was drying up for DC veteran Bernard Baily (best known as the co-creator of The Spectre) but "Winner Take All" proves the artist still had what it takes to pump out a creepy strip.

Jack: The first two stories in this issue set a high bar indeed and this story doesn't quite measure up, even though it's better than much of what we've seen from month to month. Once again, the end is gruesome--there must be something going on here, because this issue seems to mark a real turn toward more horrifying stories. I like the change that's in the air!

Jack: Bright, struggling young writer Jim Wharton and his wife Peggy buy a broken down old house and put lots of love and sweat into fixing it up. They experience a "Night Fright!" when Goro, a monstrous giant, breaks in and demands food and money. Jim and Peggy make a run for it and, as Goro attempts to give chase, invisible barriers spring up and stop him. The police arrive to cart Goro off and Peggy tells Jim that the house is haunted in a good way--the spirits helped them when they were in danger. I enjoyed this story and liked the unusual happy ending, even if Mordred the witch did not.

"Night Fright!"

Peter: Talaoc's art is great to look at but the script's pretty rancid. Goro's a comical figure, with his Hulk-talk and his ever-changing features (in one panel he even has fangs!), and should probably have been the focus of the story but, instead, we get several panels of Jim screeching to Peg to "Get Out!' Of course, she doesn't. The saving grace, to me, of "Night Fright" is that the ghostly bodyguard is never explained.

Jack: On his way home one spooky night, little Joey Cullen takes a shortcut through the graveyard and finds himself being pursued by three ghosts into a decrepit old house. When Joey can find no escape, the ghost of his grandfather suddenly appears and tells the other ghosts that Joey must be allowed to go home. Joey recalls going hunting with Grandpa less than a week before, when Grandpa was killed in an accident that also left Joey seriously wounded. Joey manages to make it home, only to find his family gathered round a coffin. Joey feels "Trapped!" when he sees that the corpse is his own. I saw this one coming a mile away. Mildred helpfully explains in the final panel that Joey did not look like the other ghosts because he did not yet know he was a ghost.

A Sparling Man-Thing

Peter: I could have done without the explanatory in the final panel (I actually didn't worry about why Joey looked different from the other ghosts) but I thought the story was very poignant. That hook's been done before (and will be done again) but, for some reason, it always works on me. Good Jack Sparling is tough to come by these days so when you get it, savor it. And now we know what a Sparling Man-Thing would have looked like.

Jack: A tree narrates the sad tale of its being cut down and make into a coffin, or "Deathbox." Yep, that's it.

Peter: "Deathbox" is one of those "stories narrated by an inanimate object" that screams pretension to me. At least it's only one page.

Jack: Pierre and Elise Chablanc's car breaks down on the way to meet a real estate agent in France, so they enter a large, old chateau to look for a telephone. They find a group of strangely dressed folks locked up in the basement and claiming to be Marie Antoinette, King Louis, and other royals awaiting a date with the guillotine. Are they "The Madmen of Montreuil?" Pierre and Elise escape some angry peasants and accidentally set fire to an outbuilding before returning to the chateau, which is now deserted. The real estate agent finds them and tells them that legend has it that Marie Antoinette and company were supposed to have been held there before they were taken to the guillotine. Rico Rival's art is quite nice but I think this story would have fit better in an issue of Ghosts.

Peter: This one's a little too busy and confusing for my tastes (as in "Night Fright," most of the narrative is spent running from one room to another) and the "twist" is anything but a surprise. If this story's any indication, Rico Rival's heading into the upper echelons of the Filipino artists quickly.

"The Madmen of Montreuil"

Jack: By the way, in the one-page introduction to this issue we learn that Cynthia, the beautiful blonde witch who likes to speak in hip lingo, was left in a basket on the doorstep of the other two ugly witches and their mother. That explains a lot!

Peter: For the first time in its brief history, circulation figures for The Witching Hour are published. The title was selling a respectable 168,005 copies a month the previous year. Of course, that is in stark contrast to the 316,069 copies that were actually printed! I'd like to think those remaining 148,000 copies are sitting in a warehouse somewhere just waiting for the right time to be released to the world. Better that than thinking about them mouldering under a huge landfill.

Jack Sparling

Weird Mystery Tales 5

"Will You Listen?"
Story by Sheldon Mayer
Art by Alfredo Alcala

"Legacy of the Damned"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Rico Rival

"Dream House"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Alex Nino

Peter: The execution of Fred Kringe, the Milltown Strangler, should have brought an end to his reign of terror but the madman somehow figured a way to rise from beyond the grave and possess innocent people, forcing them to carry on his dirty work. A local reporter is convinced he knows what's going on but the police scoff. When a possessed woman is murdered, Kringe teaches her how to similarly use her spirit to murder and the woman occupies the reporter. The detective assigned to the case is forced to shoot and kill the newsman when he approaches him menacingly with a necktie. The cop reports to his superior, informing him that the real strangler has finally been laid to rest. The spirit of Kringe "lives" on. Not one of the master's better art jobs but then, as I've mentioned in the past, Alcala shines when he's given a story that takes place outdoors. This one is all boring poses of characters talking to one another. Mayer should have at least thrown in a voodoo witch doctor with a shrunken head to help accentuate Alcala's mise en scene. As it is, "Will You Listen?" never really gives the reader any enthusiasm to keep the pages turning, with the only highlight being Kringe's breaking of the fourth wall in the final panels ("So now I'm looking for somebody to possess! How about it, reader? Is there someone you're really angry at?"). Almost comical is the fact that, just before a murder is to be committed, the phrase "I could just strangle you..." is exclaimed and, towards the end of the strip, it's hinted that these magic words must be uttered before the good stuff can begin.

Jack: You called this one just right. Average Alcala is still pretty good, though, and there is a fairly graphic panel of the dead woman lying on the floor that supports my suspicion that these comics are taking a turn for the more gruesome.

Yes, it's a woman!

Peter: Mark Enright is obsessed with the black arts and finding eternal youth (stop me if you've heard this one). To this end, he has no problem trying his wife's patience by haunting graveyards and digging up corpses for midnight masses. Wife Marie has been having an affair with Mark's chauffeur, Carl, and trying to convince her husband to change his will (currently, all funds will go to "psychic research"), all the while smiling and pretending to support Mark's nutty schemes. When the countdown to Mark's eventual heart attack and death drags on, the wily pair come up with a plan: during one of the old man's satanic rites, Carl will dress as the devil and give the amateur sorcerer a fright. The plot delivers in spades; Marie enters the room after Mark has kicked the bucket but finds a second body, that of Carl. Her previously unsuccessful husband had finally made good on his promise to summon a demon. Too bad for Marie that the demon wants more souls. Jack Oleck must have read something about "the bones of a murderer's left hand" being particularly helpful in occult ceremonies as this is the second reference this month to that peculiarity in an Oleck story (the first being "In His Own Image" in HoM above). I really enjoyed this one despite the overly familiar plot line.

Jack: To give credit where credit is due, I guess we could say that this is a rare example of a story being slightly better than the art.This one is only eight pages long but it felt like twenty. Rival can draw men pretty well and demons very well but he can't draw women to save his life if this story is any indication. Marie made my eyes hurt.

A somewhat Alex Tothian panel from Alex Nino

Peter: Anne Mason is haunted by dreams featuring a "Dream House" guarded by a faceless spirit she's sure wants her dead. Her husband, worried his wife will have a breakdown, whisks her away overseas on a vacation. The trip seems to be doing the trick until the couple are driving through the English countryside, Anne spots the house in her dreams and insists they rent the place so she can get to the bottom of the mystery. One night, Anne is lured outside onto the grounds and meets up with her dream demon. Racing back inside, she sees her husband ascending the stairs to tend to Anne's corpse. "She knew the identity of the ghost - at last." Huh? Beautifully delineated by Alex Nino and bewilderingly scripted by Jack Oleck, whose nickname should have been "The 50/50 Man" for his right-down-the-middle percentage of classic vs. dud. A riff on the infinity plot (a man goes back in time to help a man build a time machine and we later find both men are the same man, present and future), this twist climax makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, inspiring a scratch to the scalp (or even anger) rather than a smile.

Jack: I wasn't confused by the ending. I thought Anne had just been dreaming of her future death and the dream came true. The ghost was herself. Nino's art is very impressive, as usual. He draws Destiny (isn't that the name of the creepy host of this comic?) better than anyone else.

Nick Cardy

Ghosts 14

"The Bride Wore a Shroud"
Story Uncredited
Art by Buddy Gernale

"Death Weaves a Web"
Story by George Kashdan
Art by Ernie Chua

"Phantom of the Iron Horseman"
Story Uncredited
Art by Gerry Talaoc

"The Dark Dream of Death"
Story Uncredited
Art by E. R. Cruz

"The Bride Wore a Shroud"

Jack: Diane Chapman is about to get married but when she discovers a cursed old wedding dress in the attic, will the happy day be marred by a remark that "The Bride Wore a Shroud?" Her parents know that generations of women have died tragically from the curse, which began with a jilted lover, but they don't tell her. When Mom and Dad are injured in a car accident right before the big day, Diane gets no warning and goes ahead and wears the dress. The curse nearly claims her as she falls down a steep staircase but the train of the dress catches on a newel post and saves her life. The wedding goes off happily and the torn dress is discarded, thus ending the curse forever. This is a fairly good story with fairly good art, which makes it above average for Ghosts.
Peter: I think you're closing your eyes and dipping your hands in the shark tank, hoping to find a mermaid, Jack. Or some other analogy like that. So you've got a haunted gown in your wardrobe, one you're worried may be dangerous to your lineage? Well, by all means, keep it around. Diane is some loving daughter - mom slipping in and out of consciousness and pop in a coma - "let's just go on with the plans!" At least Dr. Scudder sent his best wishes.

"Death Weaves a Web"

Jack: Raymond Forbes hates his nephew Gerald's collection of spiders and throws them out the window, promising to send Gerald to an orphanage. But "Death Weaves a Web" for Raymond that night after he squashes a black widow and dreams that he's the prisoner of a giant spider. In the morning he is found dead from a spider's deadly poison. For the first page or two I thought this might be that long-forgotten story that has haunted me since childhood where the guy kills the kid to get his bed by the window only to discover that the bed is where the kid hid his collection of insects. Nope, still looking for that one.

Peter: Stories like "Death Weaves a Web" convince me that absolutely anyone could have sold a story to Murray Boltinoff as he was leaving the office for the weekend and just wanted to get the latest issue done as quick as possible.

Jack: After a terrible train crash, Hiram the signalman is unjustly blamed for allegedly failing to give the signal. His grandson protests. Flash forward fifty years and the grandson is driving another train by the same spot on a stormy night when he sees "The Phantom of the Iron Horseman," or the ghost of his grandpa, give the signal to stop. Stop he does, and he discovers that the same bridge was washed out and grandpa saved the lives of everyone on the train. It's an old story and it's only three pages long, but any opportunity to see Gerry Talaoc illustrate a story is welcome.

Peter: Great Talaoc art can't disguise the fact that this plot has been used a few times already on our journey.

"Phantom of the Iron Horseman"

A credit to the medical profession!

Jack: When people around the world share "The Dark Dream of Death," doctors are mystified and at least one blames it on the patient's dinner. Unfortunately, a Welsh mining disaster causes the death of 130 children. Was it an "early warning system" that "predicts disasters yet to come"? Heck, I don't know. What a depressing story! I would have preferred it if they could have made the connection and saved the kiddies. The Filipino artists have elevated the art in Ghosts but the stories are still run of the mill.

Peter: Amazing that a few cases of bad dreams prompts a medical conference in Brighton. At this point I think (Uncredited) was just taking ordinary stories off the AP wire and adding supernatural elements to the proceedings. A little polish (very little) and you've got a Ghosts story! Save the art on the final two stories, this issue was yet another waste of good paper.

Jack Sparling

Secrets of Sinister House 11

"The Monster of Death Island"
Story by Maxene Fabe
Art by Ruben Yandoc

"The Enemy"
Story Uncredited
Art Uncredited

"Bedlam"
Story by John Jacobson and Robert Kanigher
Art by Alex Nino

Jack: Back in 1781, Stefan Drucker was a brilliant student at the University of Frankfurt but he was never satisfied. Each time he reaches his goal, he finds he wants something else. He ends up in a little house on Lake Monstroso in the Black Forest. He meets a beautiful girl, who swims across from Death Island, and he is happy for a time, until he begins to lust after the gold that is supposed to be guarded by "The Monster of Death Island." His beautiful wife begs him not to go, certain she'll never see him again, but he does, finding the gold and putting out the monster's eye. When he gets back home, his wife tells him he should not have gone after her gold, and he sees that she's missing an eye and has snakes for hair! Ruben Yandoc's art is superb and the story, while completely predictable, is fun. As we saw in this month's House of Secrets, things are getting a bit more gruesome at DC!

Jack: In an unidentified war zone, Eve the witch joins soldiers trying to shoot and kill "The Enemy," a shadowy, barely-seen female figure who throws thunderbolts and has left the city in ruins. At first, Eve stops a sniper from doing his job, but eventually she guides his hand and we see that the enemy was a little girl. This story makes very little sense and it's frustrating that we have no credits. I can almost get the artist--it's on the tip of my tongue, but I can't place him.

Peter: Yes, we're dealing with tales of vampires and witches, but when the host is placed within the story itself, it does nothing but halt the narrative. Distracting at best. What the hell was "The Enemy" about anyway? Someone please chime in and explain to me that "right out of left field" climax. And that art almost looks Rich Buckler-esque.

Jack: In 17th century London, the insane asylum known as "Bedlam" was just the place for wealthy Elias and Delia to find a strong man to help out with some digging. They bring home a fellow named Ox and have him dig in a spot where they know treasure is buried. He finds it and Elias brains him, then plans to kill Delia as well and keep the money for himself. But Delia kills Elias instead and goes mad, landing in Bedlam, where she is purchased a year later by a gentleman who bears a striking resemblance to Ox. A simple story enlivened by stunning art by Alex Nino.

"Bedlam"

Peter: What gorgeous art! What a pedestrian script! What drove out poor Delia mad? And where did Ox flee to? Never mind, just soak up the Nino!

Nick Cardy

Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion 10

"The Monster"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by Alfredo Alcala

"They Walk by Night"
Story by Jack Oleck
Art by William Payne

"Clearance Sale"
Story by John Jacobson and Steve Skeates
Art by Al Bistur (Jo Albistur)

Peter: David Congreve is murdered by his wife and her lover and then dumped in a swamp. As we know, bayous have a way of spitting their angry dead back into the world and David becomes the latest in a series of four-color muck monsters. The guilty party return to the scene of the crime (with David's young daughter in tow) and are menaced by "The Monster" but, it turns out, David-Thing is only trying to deliver some flowers to his little angel. There is absolutely nothing original in this Forbidden Tale and I'm wondering if Jack Oleck thought it wasn't overkill to drudge up yet another swamp thing since both DC and Marvel had ongoing series featuring bayou beasts at the time. If you're going to foist a rote script on us, at least give us something to look at. In that department, "The Monster" excels with its atmospheric Alcala visuals. Unlike "Will You Listen?" (from this month's Weird Mystery), Alfredo is not boxed in and has free rein with the environment. Gnarled old cypress and reeds look almost as good as African jungles when handled by the master.

"The Monster"

Jack: Sure, it's a riff on the swamp creature story, but it's a good one! The theme of the loving father wanting to come back to contact his little girl and give her flowers worked for me, as did Alcala's strong art. I found this much more entertaining than the overwrought melodrama of Man Thing. I got a kick out of the big "DC" ring that David Congreve wore!

Peter: Two derelicts hide in a department store and discover the wax dummies are vampires. "They Walk By Night" is one of those really dumb stories where a final panel contradicts the way a character has acted throughout the entire story. In this case, one of the tramps is horrified by the appearance of the vampires and then, it's revealed, he's actually the guy who brings them food. I've rallied around Bill Payne's art in the past (his work on "Last Rituals, Last Rites" from HoM 207, in particular) but here he seems hellbent on becoming just another Pablo Marcos or Auraleon, perfectly good artists but a bit passionate in their abstract story-telling (several full page montages of sketchy proceedings).

"They Walk By Night"

Jack: Great story with brilliant art. Having department store dummies turn into vampires at night is a cool idea and Payne runs with it. I love how he has no respect for panels of straight lines. All of his pages have characters, captions, and word balloons going every which way and there are very few conventional panels. I've reproduced the last page here, where Payne has the same character in different poses flowing down the page as he comes closer, ending in a closeup. Payne has to be one the unsung heroes of '70s horror comics! The letters column in this month's issue of The Witching Hour tells us that Payne's comic book output was limited because he was contracted to a Canadian ad agency.

Peter: A window dresser for a major department store is having trouble with a mirthsome mannequin. A cute little time-waster but I have to laugh at the credits. John Jacobson could come up with the idea but then had to pass it off to Steve Skeates for fruition? It's four pages long, John! Put some effort into it. I wonder what Jacobson was paid for his "story concept." Jo(aquin) Albistur came up through the ranks of the Simon and Kirby factory of artists in the 1950s but only did a couple stories we'll bump into on our journey (at least I think he's the "Jay Albister" we'll encounter in October's House of Secrets #124). For more on Albistur (who signs this story Al Bistur) check out this fine website on Simon and Kirby's collaborators.

"Clearance Sale"

Jack: Too short at four pages to be more than an anecdote, "Clearance Sale" is still fun and goofy, with more quality art. This and House of Secrets really shone this month, and the month overall was a good one for DC horror. Even the weaker comics had some good stuff. Let's keep this going into May! Oh, wait---

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About the editors/authors

Peter Enfantino is an obsessive collector of Mystery, Crime and Horror digests including Alfred Hitchcock, Manhunt, Mike Shayne, as well as the entire stable of Warren Magazines. He has written for all the major channels on the topics, including Paperback Parade, Mystery Scene, The Digest Enthusiast, Paperback Fanatic, Men of Violence, Mystery File, Comic Effect, and Peter Normanton's From the Tomb. He Lives in Gilbert, AZ.

John Scoleri is the author of several books on artist Ralph McQuarrie, the producer of a feature length interview DVD with actress Caroline Munro, and is the self-appointed curator of the I Am Legend Archive. Much of his free time is spent scheduling programming in his home theater, The Slaughtered Lamb Cinema.

For more than ten years, John and Peter were co-editors of The Scream Factory: The Magazine of Horrors Past, Present and Future and bare•bones. They took the world by storm with their blogs, A Thriller A Day,We Are Controlling Transmission, To the Batpoles! and It Couldn't Happen Here. They're now expending their energies on the bare•bones e-zine.

Jack Seabrook is the author of two books on popular fiction: Martians and Misplaced Clues: The Life and Work of Fredric Brown (1993) and Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney (2003). He has had articles published in crime fiction magazines such as The Armchair Detective and he is a lifelong reader of comic books! Among other things he intends to educate the world to the joys of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and (with Peter) DC War and Horror comics.

Jose Cruz has written for a variety of sites and publications including Rue Morgue, Turn to Ash, Video Librarian, Classic-Horror.com, The Terror Trap, and Paracinema Magazine. His other ramblings can be found at The Haunted Omnibus. He lives in Southwest Florida with his wife and a very furry child.